Am I the only one who talks like this hella? I didn't expect hella people to talk like this, but for me the fact that I am the only person who says 'hella' hella is hella weird. Granted, I am hella exaggerating the frequency I use of the word hella, but for me 'hella' is a colloquialism I use on a daily basis.

A few months ago when I used the word "hella" in the way demonstrated in Sentence 2, my father did not understand what I was saying. I suppose he thought that 'hella' is a contraction of 'a hell of a lot of', and the sentence "These movies are a hell of a lot of good" does not make perfect sense. It came back to my mind, and I wondered if one usage of the word 'hella' is more widely comprehended than another. The results speak for themselves, and it seems most people have the opposite problem of my father.

And I still hella didn't expect to be the only person who says hella hella.

Ah... I was wondering how this poll originated. People have been using hella for a hella long time, since the 80s I believe, so I think most people would understand what you're trying to say.. I tend to think hella is usually followed by an adjective or verb, however it is sometimes followed by a noun as in your 1st sentence or even used alone. I have to say that I understood your 2nd sentence, and thought your 1st sentence was a bit odd. Perhaps that particular usage isn't as ubiquitous among the people I hang out with, or perhaps I'm just too old ...

Hmmm, how did that South Park episode use the word hella? Did it happen to parallel the construction used in Sentence 2?

Just California? That's all? Sheesh, I hella thought that 'hella' was further spread out. I guess I'm a fish in water. Hmmm, how many people here have heard of the word 'hecka', a relative of 'hella'? There probably isn't anybody here who's heard 'helza', which I substitute for 'hella' about 20% of the time, especially when I want to emphasize something - i.e. "That Asian fusion theatre piece about AIDS was helza weird." I think 'helza' is a relatively new mutation of 'hella', but who knows, maybe it's older than I think.

bellum paxque wrote:Since I've been nominated as sociolinguist by nostos

Personally I read triple G's 'loda' as I think she had intended, with the only difference in pronunciation beteen 'lotta' and 'loda' being that the unvoiced alveolar plosive [t] had been substituted by a voiced alveolar plosive [d]. Perhaps she should have written 'lodda' to account for that pesky 'o' in her non-standardised transcription

Well, this is actually a topic of particular interest to me, mainly since I had the hardest time figuring out exactly what that intervocalic sound IS.

Here's an experiement: see if the two underlined phrases sound the same.

I'd never laud a President for that.
There's a lotta precedent for that.

Now, the "d" in "laud" is clearly voiced. But the "tt" in "lotta" (that's my spelling; you're welcome to another) is not voiced. Nor is it voiceless (as I believe the British might do). Nor is there a glottal stop (as I think a Cockney speaker might render it).

For me, it's a tap (also called "flap"), exactly like the Spanish (untrilled) r.

Flapping is the process of replacing an intervocalic t or d with a quick voiced tap of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. In both Canadian and American English, it can only occur if the t or d is between two vowels, and as long as the second vowel is not stressed. As a result, the alveolar stops in waiting, wading, seated, seeded, and capital are all flapped. Flapping can also occur if there is an r between the first vowel and the alveolar stop, as in words like barter and party.

alveolar tap: North American English "latter"
...
Alveolar flaps
Spanish is a good illustration of an alveolar flap, for it contrasts it with a trill: pero /peÉ¾o/ "but" vs. perro /pero/ "dog".

If you're genuinely pronouncing a voiced d here, I'd be surprised.

Oddly enough, I have a friend who always pronounces the consonant in the situations outlined above. I tried to get her to alter her pronunciation to the tap (before realizing exactly what it was, phonetically), but she couldn't really reproduce it. She's from Michigan, I believe, but also lived in the Philippines. I wonder if it's a regional variant or some type of hypercorrection?

Now I don't mean to be chauvinistic, but describing it as "Cockney" is now outmoded. I've heard many a West Londoner (who has never been to Bow) use a glottal stop for a "t".

Not that I condone it of course...

I agree that it's an alveolar tap. In almost all exaggerated American accents I've heard in Britain, it seems that way. However, it does tend to stay on the stop side rather than verge into the trill - though that could be its future.

About the Filipino/a; I'm sure it's "hypercorrection" - saying it as it appears to be written. But I know nothing about Michigan, so I can't really judge.

bellum paxque wrote:I'd never laud a President for that.
There's a lotta precedent for that.

Now, the "d" in "laud" is clearly voiced. But the "tt" in "lotta" (that's my spelling; you're welcome to another) is not voiced.

. . .

For me, it's a tap (also called "flap"), exactly like the Spanish (untrilled) r.

Agreed. For my pronunciation at least, it is in fact a tap.

Not to be too nit-picky, but tap and flap should be distinguished, at least according to Ashby and Maidment (2005):

However, there is an important difference between the two articulations. For a tap, the active articulator [in this case tongue] moves rapidly towards the passive articulator [alveolar ridge] and rapidly away again . . . For a flap, the active articulator strikes the passive articulator as it passes by.

The only example they give is in Punjabi which I don't speak. They diagram it enough to allow me to make my conjectures, but there's no substitution for the real thing. They give the IPA symbol for it but it can't be reproduced on these boards

I voted that the first sentence sounds weird. First I ever saw/heard the word was in the song Hella Good (which also accurately describes the song itself, IMO. ) I took it to mean "very", so by substitution, "he watches very movies" doesn't scan but "these movies are very good" does.

If I were to attempt to translate either sentence, I'd be tempted to use μάλα or σφόδρα, thus rendering the first as "he very much watches movies". To get the intended meaning I'd have to translate the word differently in different contexts (which is not unusual after all, for example the many uses of ὡς) and go with whichever gender of πολύς matches the word for "movie".

But then again, the tap as a seperate phoneme is not recognised by IPA.

It does indeed have a voiced retroflex flap; the symbol on the IPA chart is and 'r' with an extra diacritic on the bottom. If you go here and click to enlarge, you'll see the symbol at 6 across, 4 down at the to of the chart labelled 'consonants (pulmonic)'. The symbol for a voiced alveolar tap is at 4 across, 4 down (the association with Battleship isn't lost on me!)

The chart leads one to believe taps and flaps are the same, but Ashby and Maidment say 'The only flap symbol on the IPA chart is [r with the thingy on the bottom]' and make a point of distinguishing them, and give diagrams for how to produce one. Still I'm not sure that they aren't used interchangeably in most contexts.

I read and made extensive notes on 'an intro to phonetics' a month and a half ago, understood it pretty well but never internalised all of the subtleties it provides. Anyway, I think this is where the confusion lies with GGG: the tap is voiced, not silent, which is why she wrote 'loda'; bpq. wrote 'lotta' because it is not quite as fully articulated as the [d] suggests. So we are all not quite correct; the compression phase of the tap lasts for too short a time to be considered the (obstruent) plosive [d]; rather it is the (sonorant) but voiced alveolar tap [r, just more rounded].